![]() ![]() The piece ended with Cale taking an ax to the piano. The audience was full of people a young composer would want to impress, like Olga Koussevitzky, widow of composer and Tanglewood bigwig Serge Koussevitzky. John Cale killed his classical career with an axĪnother 1963 avant-garde dust-up for John Cale came when he performed a piece of his own at legendary Massachusetts classical venue Tanglewood. “Which in fact turned out to be a lot more than I made with the Velvet Underground.”Ĭlick to load video 3. “We got a royalty check for $2.79,” remembered Reed of his first-ever recording. At 14, guitarist and backup singer Lou (then billed as Lewis) wrote the B-side to the band’s only single, a doo wop-tinged stroll that features R&B giant King Curtis on sax. In the 50s, Lou Reed was a teenage rock’n’roller, living on Long Island and working with a band called The Jades. Lou Reed was already making records at 14 Despite his unstinting earnestness, Cale ultimately inspired only titters of nervous laughter from the studio audience. He even did a brief demonstration on the studio’s piano, but early-60s American TV viewers weren’t ready for minimalist musical concepts. An epic John Cage-produced performance of Erik Satie’s Vexations (comprised of a simple phrase repeated 840 times) earned Cale an appearance on TV game show I’ve Got a Secret, where celebrity guests had to guess his distinction. In 1963 the Velvet Underground co-founder was deeply embedded in the avant-garde music scene. A pre-Velvet Underground John Cale made America laugh on TV Listen to the official soundtrack to The Velvet Underground, out now. Here are just a few of the juicy tidbits revealed in The Velvet Underground. In the process, some annals are amplified, others debunked, and new ones unveiled. ![]() Interviewing surviving members John Cale and Maureen Tucker along with tons of the band’s intimates, influences, peers, and proteges, Haynes gets the inside scoop on the Velvet Underground’s story, stitching it into an intoxicating tapestry with the avant-garde film, art, writing, and music that were part of the band’s transgressive milieu. So Haynes seems like the ideal auteur to document the most unconventional rock legends of the 60s in The Velvet Underground. The last time director Todd Haynes tackled an American musical legend, he redefined the musical biopic with 2007’s I’m Not There, his leftfield look at Bob Dylan’s legacy. “That’s not what we were doing.” Probably no other band has had such a drastic disparity between initial reception and posthumous notoriety, and more than 50 years after their final album, it’s finally time for a major Velvet Underground documentary. A separate release of the two discs or so of truly new material would have been welcomed by the many fans who aren't interested in paying for a five-CD box of stuff when they already have well over half of it.“We didn’t expect to sell records,” said Lou Reed about the Velvet Underground. ![]() The thing is, though, that virtually everyone who's interested in this material has already bought the four studio albums, sometimes several times over. And there are sundry other unreleased live and studio items, highlighted by a scorching live 1967 "Guess I'm Falling in Love" and the 1969 demo "Countess From Hong Kong." There are also highlights from VU and Another View, longer versions of Loaded's "Sweet Jane" and "New Age," and an 80-page booklet. Other big bonuses include no less than seven outtakes from Loaded and other songs re-done by Reed on his early solo albums. The entire first disc is devoted to a drummer-less 1965 rehearsal tape in John Cale's loft, with radically different, almost folky run-throughs of most of the important songs from their classic debut, as well as a song that only made it onto Nico's first LP ("Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams"), and one which makes its first appearance anywhere (the Dylanesque "Prominent Men"). Most serious Velvet fans have all four of the core studio albums already (although the third, self-titled LP is presented in its muffled, so-called "closet" mix), and will be most interested in the previously unavailable recordings, which do hold considerable fascination. Is it an essential purchase? That depends on your level of fanaticism. It has all four of the studio albums released by the Lou Reed-led lineup, and a wealth of previously unreleased goodies. Does this five-CD box set feature an abundance of essential material? Certainly. ![]()
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